ST. COLMAN, M.

IN the beginning of the eleventh century, the
neighboring nations of Austria, Moravia, and Bohemia were engaged
against each other in implacable dissensions and wars. Colman, a Scot
or Irishman, and according to Cuspinian and other Austrian
historians, of blood royal, going on a penitential pilgrimage to
Jerusalem, arrived by the Danube from the enemy’s country at
Stockheraw, a town six miles above Vienna. The inhabitants persuading
themselves that he was a spy, unjustly tortured him various ways, and
at length hanged him on a gibbet, on the 18th of October, in 1012.
The double testimony of heroic actions of virtue and of miracles is
required before any one is enrolled by the church among the saints,
as Gregory IX. declares in his bull of the canonization of St. Antony
of Padua. Neither miracles suffice, without clear proof of heroic
sanctity, nor the latter without the former, says that pope; and the
same is proved by the late Benedict XIV.1 A fervent spirit of
compunction and charity, and invincible meekness and patience under
exquisite torments and unjust sufferings, were an undoubted proof of
the sanctity of the servant of God, which was confirmed by the
incorruption of his body, and innumerable miracles. Three years after
his death his body was translated by the bishop of Megingard, at the
request of Henry, marquis of Austria, and deposited at Mark, the
capital of the ancient Marcomans, near Moravia. St. Colman is honored
in Austria among the tutelar saints of that country, and many
churches in that part of Germany bear his name. See his life written
soon after his death by Crekenfred, abbot of Mark, published by
Canisius; also Dithmar in Chron. and Leopold VI. marquis of Austria,
in Chronico de Austriæ dynastis; Aventinus; Raderus, t. 3, p.
109, and Colgan, Act. SS. Hib. p. 107, n. 12.